What will be the BDUK solution for............

........those of us who live a long way from the cabinet or exchange? In Staffordshire like most other places the aim is to provide a minimum of 2Mbps to the 5 or 10% who cannot obtain 'superfast' (24Mbps) speeds.

Given the distance to the exchange, what technologies would be considered accepting that copper cannot do it?

DOI: in exactly this situation - currently using Sat Broadband (pricey and as noted elsewhere, slowing progressively)

Distance to exchange is irrelevant, it is distance to the cabinet

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband....
Benefits tend to run out at 2km so if you are further than that, what will happen depends on what they are trying to achieve and their targets.

Some counties are using satellite for the small percentage outside the easier footprint, or solutions like BET or if economics work out then maybe FTTP or a smaller sub cabinet to run FTTC from.

The target is 97% connected to a fibre based service
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5860-staffordshir...
With 2% of these falling into the 2 Mbps to 24 Mbps region.

As for the other 3% it will be what is most cost effective.

It doesn't make sense to me that they have just stuck a FTTC cabinet near me that will enable my line to receive vdsl with a projected speed of ~60Mbps, yet a couple of miles away, in small hamlets and villages, they are struggling to get 2Mbps with no plans for fibre.

I currently sync at ~13000Kbps on a ADSL2+ 37dB attenuation which is more than adequate for my my needs yet those a few miles away only get 2Mbps or less.

Edited by 4M2 (Tue 08-Oct-13 16:23:52)

But the fact you currently get 13Mb/s is probably more to do with the local area and the fact it is most likely easier and cheaper to upgrade. Therefore the ROI on upgrading yours could be significantly better than those that currently have 2Mb/s due to the cables/network design. It is not done on who will benefit most but on where the best potential payback is.

Down to the cost to provide the service, deliver improvements for the majority, or deliver for the minority or put another way

Upgrade 4 cabinets in an area for £120,000 to service potentially 2,000 properties or four cabinets in a more rural area where there may only be 500 properties served and a poorer speed profile due to sparse nature of the properties.

We all know the solution, for quick and fast fix, fixed wireless and for longer term FTTP but not sure anyone in control of the public purse wants to spend the money for the FTTP element. Hence the half way house, that at least gets the aggregation nodes out into the wild, so that if enough order fibre on demand the economics to roll-out commercial FTTP might change in 5 to 10 years. Emphasis on might of course.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Distance to exchange is irrelevant, it is distance to the cabinet

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband....
Benefits tend to run out at 2km so if you are further than that, what will happen depends on what they are trying to achieve and their targets.

Some counties are using satellite for the small percentage outside the easier footprint, or solutions like BET or if economics work out then maybe FTTP or a smaller sub cabinet to run FTTC from.

The target is 97% connected to a fibre based service
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5860-staffordshir...
With 2% of these falling into the 2 Mbps to 24 Mbps region.

As for the other 3% it will be what is most cost effective.

I suppose what I was asking is as I am probably in the 2% bit and therefore likely to get fibre of some type, how exactly will it be done?

I am 7km from the single cabinet which is next to the exchange in Field. Where I live is by no means remote (comapred to some areas of the Peak District covered by Staffordshire) being on a mainroad with about 15 houses and farms in the vicinity.

If it is Fibre, what do they do? Do they string Fibre along the Poles and have small pole suspended 'cabinets' along the way?

If you have overhead phone wiring, the visible bits are in this blog item http://blog.thinkbroadband.com/2012/11/spotters-guid...

Would tend to need 30-40 properties within a 200-500m radius of a central location to work I suspect.

Most likely something like BET
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4640-could-bet-pr...
or could be a 4G wireless solution.

In short I would be expecting satellite vouchers and take anything else as a bonus.

There's no magic solution, unfortunately.


The 'gold standard' is Fibre To The Premises, which typically follows existing buried or overhead cable routes. The problem is the cost involved in FTTP, which is why most of the BT Openreach roll-out is the much cheaper Fibre To The Cabinet.

In some cases, network rearrangement allows deployment of a new cabinet with a Fibre To The Cabinet twin at a cost-effective price. Sadly, the necessary network rearrangement might not be able to bring together enough lines of a viable length to make this option worthwhile.

Fibre to the Distribution Point is being worked on by various organisations, but is not yet a deployable product. This is a halfway house between FTTC and FTTP - it takes fibre deep into the network, with the remaining short pairs of wires used instead of the cost of running fibre into each home. How useful this will be remains to be seen - the cost of the unit at the distribution point and the difficulty of providing power (even if this is backfed down the consumers' lines) might mean this is no more cost-effective that 'full' FTTP. Time will tell.


As MrSaffron says, any fibre deployment gets fibre deeper into the network, which provides a basis for further roll-out. FTTP On Demand might eventually turn into a good way for the subscriber and BT Openreach to share the costs rolling out FTTP in areas where there is already a fibre network.

The costs involved in the current FTTPoD product, which has only been rolled out in a limited number of areas, are not very attractive. The minimum installation cost to the ISP is £700 plus VAT, with further distance-related costs added. Anyone at the sort of distance from the aggregation node (and likely, therefore, the FTTC cabinet) where FTTPoD is likely to be of significant benefit is more likely to be paying rather more. At 1500-1999m from the aggregation node, the total installation cost is £4000 plus VAT - for anyone further away than that, it's 'price on application'.

Once FTTPoD is installed, the ISP commits to a 36 month subscription to the 330/30 FTTP product at full price - currently £38/month plus VAT. By the time the ISP has added their costs, even a throttled down service based on FTTPoD is likely to cost around £70/month.


The commercial solutions for those who cannot receive a cost-effective fibre service are likely to involve fixed wireless and, if fixed wireless is not feasible, satellite.

In areas of particular difficulty, self-help is always an option: B4RN are good ambassadors for JFDI FTTP (Just Farmers Doing It). The B4RN approach has lots to commend it, but would be difficult to implement without a lot of skills and effort being brought to the project by dedicated volunteers.


Unfortunately, you cannot defy physics or economic reality. There are always going to be some places that are difficult to serve in a cost-effective manner.

In reply to a post by David_W:

There's no magic solution, unfortunately.

The prices you quote are for an individual connection, which inevitably would be expensive.

If FTTP is rolled out to an area the costs are much lower as demonstrated by the Gigaclear and Jersey projects.

I would like to see BT+BDUK+County Councils take a more active roll in getting enough people in selected areas to commit to an FTTP solution for the projects economic.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

In reply to a post by David_W:

There's no magic solution, unfortunately.

The prices you quote are for an individual connection, which inevitably would be expensive.

If FTTP is rolled out to an area the costs are much lower as demonstrated by the Gigaclear and Jersey projects.

I would like to see BT+BDUK+County Councils take a more active roll in getting enough people in selected areas to commit to an FTTP solution for the projects economic.

So would I, BUT if the area was already economically unviable in the first place, its likely to be because of distance or the thinly spread population anyway. What would happen if say only 50% of the local households committed?

One of the potential benefits I see from the (generally shambolic) BDUK project would be a degree of capacity building for the future to protect the very existence of rural communities. As BB availability is having an effect on house prices already, what chance to small villages have of surviving if BB access is poor/non-existent?

Surely no-one is suggesting that everyone moves to live in a connurbation?

In reply to a post by knighton:

So would I, BUT if the area was already economically unviable in the first place, its likely to be because of distance or the thinly spread population anyway. What would happen if say only 50% of the local households committed?

Gigaclear require and have achieved a 30% take up in areas deemed uneconomic by BT.

If BT were to put fibre in such areas they would likely achieve a higher take up rate.

Quite simply they have not got a solution. I am a bit surprised that someone like the Country landowners Association are not threatening a judicial review of the contracts, since BT appear to have been awarded them without the capability of fullfilling them.

So no solutions at all? Full stop? Really?

Lots of technical solutions available just the cost per premise is the stumbling block

But then by not rolling out every where there is a hole in the market that can be exploited.

Not covering all premises with superfast under the bduk contracts should be of zero surprise given original targets mentioned once size of public pot was known.

"Distance to exchange is irrelevant, it is distance to the cabinet" - how do you come up with that for an ADSL solution, Andrew?

No solutions that they are prepared to commit to publicly - they seem to be hoping that the boffins come up with something they can afford before the contract ends - unless you know differently

Knighton

There are some solutions that will be available but they are unlikely to be rolled out untill everything else is nearly completed. Then when all the not spots are clearly known these will come into play. Until then no-one is quite sure who will not get 2Mb (15Mb/24Mb) due to all the variables in the access networks.

Possibles are Fixed LTE for small clusters or houses spread over small areas.
Satellite for individual houses away from anyone else.
White space radio for widely spread houses with line of sight to a mast.

FTTP with 'self dig' support for 40-60 houses in a small area.

Because the majority of the speed upgrades via the BDUK process are cabinet based

So the use of FTTP to server clusters of properties on long lines in Cornwall, or the insertion of new cabinets both at the exchange and remote locations are still in the labs?

I think not.

BET and other broadband amplifier options have existed for years, so very little of the problem is technical, but rather financial. This is all stuff the boffins have worked on in the last decade and paraded around trade shows, bt demos etc

Andrew

I think you are being simplistic. We all know solutions exist. The question is what solutions are BT going to deploy for the last 10%?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Lots of technical solutions available just the cost per premise is the stumbling block.

Cost is very likely the issue, but the provision of a minimum 2mbps has always been a government commitment. So should any BDUK funded project be allowed to proceed before a solution to how the 2mbps service has been identified and incorporated into the county plans?

Otherwise in a couple of years time, the county council will just say sorry, we have run out of money.

Incorporated how? i.e. everything planned before the first cabinet is ever stood as part of the project?

Or should the 10% be decided NOW and just get given BET or a satellite voucher? Thats the easiest option

Solutions BT have used in Cornwall

extra fttc cabinets on long lines
extra fttp for clusters where no point putting a cabinet as everyone would be within easy reach of aggregration node

Not sure if there is any BET, but there was some sometime ago in Scotland.

At end of the day its either give the best solution for that property, or just mandate BET or similar and just meet the bare minimum and if the rest of the project goes well and is under cost - heaven forbid you come back and look again at the areas you spent money on in the early stages,

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Incorporated how? i.e. everything planned before the first cabinet is ever stood as part of the project?

Or should the 10% be decided NOW and just get given BET or a satellite voucher? Thats the easiest option

I am arguing that there should be a costed technical solution for each area which should be published. That way people will know what they will get and can react accordingly, and the County Councils will know whether the project can be completed within budget.

Before or after contract signing?

My understanding is that BT does some preliminary modelling before signing.
After signing council input on intervention areas, which will get FTTP as a priority, or which hard to reach areas MUST be superfast as opposed to just 2 Mbps to 24 Mbps.
Then BT replans and we get the basic maps and BT starts the next phase of with surveying/planning on the actual cabinets, e.g. calculate locations/power costs
Then BT starts the getting quotes for power and lodges road works applications and starts the work.

The last two parts appear to be done in phases, rather than every cabinet planned to the n'th degree.

The worry people have really I suspect is that BT can walk away from the project and ignore the USC areas if they splurge all the money on cabinets in the early phases.

Lets get real here! We are talking about customers at long distances from both the exchange and their cabinet. UNLESS the BDUK scheme installs a fibre cabinet alongside the existing (and I think all who are not bedazzled by the 'Emporer's new Clothes' recognise this is unlikely to happen for small clusters) the customer will be on ADSL so unless you have rewritten the rules for ADSL it IS distance from the exchange that matters. Of course, if some other form of technology is implemented then we start a new sheet.

As the conference on Monday revealed BDUK have just woken up to the consequences of this farcical procurement exercise.

Had they stuck to the conclusions of their own survey in 2010 they may now have a solution that doesnt involve shoving the 2mb commitment further and further into future.

To quote from that survey "BDUK has concluded that a solution to the challenge of universal coverage will involve a mix of technologies and all �bit-carrying assets �have a role to play. Geographic densities �expressed as premises per km2� begin to emerge as an approximate guide for determining the most cost effective network upgrade: e.g. fibre-based solutions are cost-effective in denser areas; areas with fewer than 350 premises per km2 points towards a wireless solution; and deeply rural and hilly areas with fewer than circa 35 premises per km2 may indicate satellite solutions."

The USC areas were always going to be done after the main fibre based roll-out as far as I was aware.

Why? Because the enabling of various rural and town exchanges made deploying some of the USC solutions easier.

Maybe BDUK has only just woken up to this, but I don't see why the amount of surprise from the lobbying groups.

Should be said some councils have used fixed wireless already and others satellite schemes, and Wales had a voucher scheme previously, the current one is a bit messier due to lax wording by civil servants.

At the end of the day the real political reason for the spending was so they can declare a better broadband service than the other major European countries and several sources have now said we are at that stage now.

The whole thing fell apart when they started the bidding for counties outside the pilot areas before the pilot areas had actually delivered anything.

Well I already have Satellite. The BDUK contract was signed in May this year and as nothing would actually happen until 2014 I went ahead and got Tooway installed.

The dilemma now of course is that (as many have found), the service is oversold. My 20Mbps download on the XXL package at £65 per month was running at 0.3Mbps all last night and to be fair, most nights when I would want to use it.

So IF Satellite is the answer for places like mine, I cannot see the USC of 2Mbps being achieved anyway. If the Satellites are currently oversubscribed, what will happen when the remaining 2% of 'unviable' areas for alternatives are added in?

Questions that the satellite providers who are lobbying for inclusion in the final hard to reach areas should answer really.

In theory new satellites or beams could be refocused from other areas of Europe, though some of the current problems may not be spot beam related but the way that the backhaul from the earth station is being handled.

For all we know we might have a new Government in 2015 and they could spend more on broadband, or less or just leave things alone - impossible to project really.

In Suffolk the priority was supposed to be not spots and slow spots. in practice of course BT are prioritising infill around existing fibre enabled areas.

Which at least keeps those complaining that nothing is happening slightly quiet as something is happening...

Please one sector but annoy another is the real world alas.

If the not/slow spots are likely to be served with FTTC/P then the larger exchanges will be used to host the fibre handovers, so those need to be built first usually. So for example in Cornwall the Falmouth exchange is the fibre centre for 8 exchange areas.

They could enable the core exchanges, run the fibre to the most remote cabinets first though, but I suspect given the pressure to hit as close to 90% nationally in 2015, getting the larger areas done first makes some sense, unless you are not in one of those areas.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Questions that the satellite providers who are lobbying for inclusion in the final hard to reach areas should answer really.

In theory new satellites or beams could be refocused from other areas of Europe, though some of the current problems may not be spot beam related but the way that the backhaul from the earth station is being handled.

For all we know we might have a new Government in 2015 and they could spend more on broadband, or less or just leave things alone - impossible to project really.

Certainly refocussing some of the beams providing Broadband to the fish in the North Sea, the Channel and the Atlantic could do to be looked at.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Before or after contract signing?

My understanding is that BT does some preliminary modelling before signing.
After signing council input on intervention areas, which will get FTTP as a priority, or which hard to reach areas MUST be superfast as opposed to just 2 Mbps to 24 Mbps.
Then BT replans and we get the basic maps and BT starts the next phase of with surveying/planning on the actual cabinets, e.g. calculate locations/power costs

My arguement is that the plans showing what it is proposed that everyone will get should be published at this stage in sufficient detail for everyone to know what ill happen in their case.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Then BT starts the getting quotes for power and lodges road works applications and starts the work.

The last two parts appear to be done in phases, rather than every cabinet planned to the n'th degree.

The worry people have really I suspect is that BT can walk away from the project and ignore the USC areas if they splurge all the money on cabinets in the early phases.

Both BT and the government may well fail to make adequate provision for the difficult areas and since they are likely to be last the budgets may well be exhausted.

I am all for simple lists that are searchable, so people can identify their postcode and know whether they are in the USC type area, but planning exactly what tech they will receive at this stage becomes a lot more fun.

Or to put it another way, BET would be the openreach choice if push come to shove for USC, but in 12 months there may be more options for 4G, fixed wireless and maybe it is holding out too much hope that projects may go under budget like Cornwall and use this saving to boost coverage further.

That they have had this technology out for several years and it has gone nowhere suggests BET is a flop.

My understanding is the BET fails on 3 counts:

1. It cannot guarantee 2mb
2. It has no upgrade path
3. On BTs costings it is nearly as expensive to deploy as fibre

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

I am all for simple lists that are searchable, so people can identify their postcode and know whether they are in the USC type area, but planning exactly what tech they will receive at this stage becomes a lot more fun.

Or to put it another way, BET would be the openreach choice if push come to shove for USC, but in 12 months there may be more options for 4G, fixed wireless and maybe it is holding out too much hope that projects may go under budget like Cornwall and use this saving to boost coverage further.

But if I know it may well be BET it makes it easier for me to decide whether subscribing to the local altnet project would be a good idea. If I was told that I was likely to get FTTP (at FTTC type speeds and prices) it would be a much harder decision.

1. Possibly
2. A problem yes
3. But if serving properties very geographically dispersed it might still be cheaper than FTTC/P

I don't like BET but its one of the solutions out there, and if someone has no broadband then it might seem brilliant to them. For someone who already has 800-900 Kbps obviously it seems like hardly worth the bother.

There in lies the gotcha.

BT and councils are wanting to play the - if we can roll-out cheaply elsewhere we will expand and use up the money rather than hand it back.

As things stand nothing stopping altnets deploying, only becomes difficult if they are seeking public money or feel that if there is competition they will not get enough customers to make it viable.

In theory if an altnet deploys and informs the county it meets the criteria for inclusion as a supplier of superfast then a change control can be started and the area avoided. There are some complaints that the OMR side is not working, but difficult to assess as not seen the submissions to see if the boxes are clearly ticked and the council is wilfully ignoring.

Well I know new cabs have been deployed in Cornwall for things like very long EO line clusters, whether other counties will do the same is down to the size of their budget.

There was also a 48 line rugged DSLAM (ECI I believe) looked at in Cornwall but don't think it has been deployed.

Other single line amplifiers (not BET) have been looked at, but don't have a handy link for more detail on them. Idea being you can place it midway down a very long rural line and rebroadband the ADSL signal, almost doubling the reach. BET uses a box at both ends of the cable run.

They have also done comparisons with white space and fixed 4G.

So while some may say I am dazzled I prefer to look at the variety of options and hope that others will do the same, otherwise we might as well give up, turn the lights off and spend the BDUK money down the pub.

...........which in reality means distance from the exchange for a wired solution, not 'the cabinet' as you said,, which was the discussion point,, doesn't it?

just get given BET

Please, dear God, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo !

Post deleted by seb

I look forward to the experts' view about DSL ring - what's the catch?

In reply to a post by zhango:

I look forward to the experts' view about DSL ring - what's the catch?

The ANFP doesn't allow reverse DSL, so there's a hurdle to start with.